


There's Some Sad Things Known To Man

by Anonymous



Category: IT (1990)
Genre: Adult Losers Club (IT), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, First Time, M/M, Richie is a service top at heart and that's that on that, The others are more minor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-11-09 06:31:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20849051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: When the Loser's Club reunites, it brings Eddie back into Richie's life... and with him, all the feelings he never knew were buried.Some canon divergence in a few key places-- mostly to keep Eddie alive, but the whole Bowers thing is also changed drastically and glossed over for Reasons.





	1. Don't Let My Show Convince You

Eddie Kaspbrak… Oh, how could Richie have forgotten him? Well, he guesses he knows how-- _ It_, somehow. It wouldn’t let them remember. Did something to them all because it was afraid, or Derry did something to them when they left, but…

But he’s everything Richie could have hoped to find. His laughter and his smile, and those familiar dark eyes… and his glasses suit him. Not that those doe eyes need any amplifying, not that he needs to look any more delicate than he always has. He looks delicate, but it hits Richie like a one-two punch, the thought that he _ isn’t_. He was tiny, when they were young, he looked a lot younger than Richie did for a couple years, because of the height, because Eddie was always so cute and Richie… well, cute wasn’t the word most people would have used. Eddie was always slight, sickly-- no. _ Not _ sickly. Some memories rush back faster than others. Eddie was never sick, not the way he seemed. Eddie was…

Eddie was anxious, about a lot, and he had been sheltered, but he was never weak. He was… Sweet. He was sweet, or Richie was sweet on him. Richie had loved him. How unfair, to love someone with the strength he feels now, and to forget them… and to find them again only for something monstrous to loom over you both. Only to know you still can’t have that love. 

His first night back in Derry… he’d like for it to be his only night back in Derry, he’d very much like that, because one night of this is enough, it’s a doozy. He doesn’t want another night of learning someone he once cared about is dead because of this clown, he doesn’t want another night of grappling with all the trauma he’d… well, no, he was never spared it, he just never knew where it came from before. He never knew why he woke up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night sometimes, or who he was reaching for when he did, he never knew why he couldn’t make a relationship work, why he needed his life to be something he could never make it, why he was afraid sometimes for no reason he could find, why he missed something keenly, why… He doesn’t want another night of terrible visions disrupting his dinner, and he doesn’t want another night of bad news, and he doesn’t want another night of turning to someone, reaching for someone, seeing someone light and warm and golden and then realizing he couldn’t…

It had been innocent enough when they were young, though at the time he feared it wasn’t, that it was somehow dangerous to love a boy, that he might somehow be dangerous to Eddie. But it had been… Lust was a distant consideration, there were things he would joke about loudly, but it didn’t translate into readiness or want. The kisses he’d yearned for were soft, dry things, the places he’d longed to touch were things like wrists, the side of the neck, perhaps in a very daring moment, a knee-- or they were the places he already touched only it would be different. Different to caress a cheek than to teasingly pinch it, different to put your arm around a boy in an embrace than to sling it carelessly about him, different to run your fingers through his hair than to muss it up roughly.

Now, it’s so easy to touch Eddie the way he used to, to poke at him and wrestle him and play with his hair… much nicer now, all that length and none of the shellac. It’s just that the things he wants don’t stop where they used to. He wants to hold him, yeah, feels a deep and secret thrill at the rather ridiculous notion that being held in the arms of one Richie Tozier might cure what ails the boy, might somehow make him feel safer in the face of resurfaced memories and rekindled threats. He still wants to kiss him softly, it’s just that he also wants to kiss him deeply, and in a lot of places he never thought of kissing him before. He wants to lay him down in a bed-- hell, or a couch, or a floor-- where he can spend a whole night kissing him. And more.

He’d watched him through dinner, and felt a low, stirring warmth grow into a heat with every fresh rush of fondness. That’s what he’d been missing in his life, the fondness. He’d jumped headfirst into relationships where he told himself he could feel things he didn’t, and he never knew what he was missing, though every time he’d figure out eventually he was missing something.

He was missing the way sunlight bubbled through his veins when Eddie Kaspbrak helped him do a ventriloquism bit with a roasted fish head, and the myriad of desires both innocent and otherwise that were born in a supernova when he leaned over his bowl to eat the dumplings from his soup so delicately, each one passing perfect pink lips. He was missing the way things felt _ real _ with Eddie, like it all mattered so much.

He remembers Eddie, small and sad and serious-- not serious the way Stan was, not serious like a boy who was born to grow up to be an accountant and was only trying to wait out all the childhood bits so he could get to the dry stuff, but serious… Serious like a boy whose mother sucked all the kid out of him by telling him he was too sick to go and be a kid, like a boy who was frightened of a lot, only he wasn’t frightened when he was laughing, and if Richie could make him laugh, then everything else would lift away and he’d just be a boy. A boy whose day Richie had the magic power to improve, at least some of the time. Often enough.

He’s been missing that. 

And Eddie, at the library, easily letting himself be pulled along and cheered up in the wake of a fresh horror… Eddie, unresisting and laughing, or… or squirming and struggling in that playful way, but… but laughing, and making Eddie laugh had been the only thing that could lift the crushing weight off of Richie’s chest. He jokes when he feels defensive, and he feels defensive more often than he’d like to think about, but razor-edged jokes never make him feel better, they only form the barrier to keep him from feeling worse. It’s only when he drops the meanness and focuses on making Eddie laugh that he feels any real peace. Oh, the others, too, making any of them laugh after what they’d seen feels good, makes him feel better, but Eddie…

Just a shame it couldn’t last. The peace in the library hadn’t lasted, and he’s not sure he could call the inn ‘peace’. He pushes down on the urge to be as close as humanly possible to Eddie, lets the others have their turns being the one to reach for him, sit next to him, but… well, he doesn’t give them that much of a shot. The moment Eddie is on the floor, Richie is sprawled out beside him, close enough to feel how warm he is, close enough… close enough that sometimes one of them will shift and there will be a moment. Arms brushing, or the moment where if he turned… if they both turned, if they only leaned in just a little bit closer, then… 

He knows he wants impossible things. He wants a man whose heart is spoken for, isn’t it enough to know that? A man who has a life he isn’t part of. It doesn’t matter. He knows one thing now, and it is that he was always meant to burn. Long and slow until the day he burns out, he was meant to burn for just one man. _ Devotion_, who’da thunk it? Not him, not for years. Well, no. He’d known, hadn’t he? He’d tried very hard. He’d played pretend often enough, styled himself a knight in shining armor, riding across the desert on a fine arab charger, thrown himself at the altar time after time in hopes that he’d find The One. That when he did, she’d want him to be devoted to her and he would want… 

He doesn’t know. He liked the idea of a courtly love, and he lived in a town where that kind of thing was only ever in the movies. The thing about courtly love, and other such half-remembered notions from things he’d read as a boy or movies he’d seen, is that there was something unattainable, you could reach for it all you liked but you’d never touch it, and if you couldn’t touch it, you could never break it. Every time he touched love, he broke it. 

Eddie is unattainable in the realest ways, but if anything that makes the devotion burn brighter. He won’t hurt him, or break him, because he won’t be allowed close enough. But he can burn… he can burn to let his fingers run through wheat-blond waves, he can burn to fold his arms around a body he knows would fit to his like they were made to… He can burn to say something serious for once, to speak about real feelings he knows have to stay hidden. 

He’s come to accept that he has them, in a general sense. He’s come to accept that they are what they are, and he is what he is. It’s something about himself that he doesn’t want seeing the light of day, but there’s no point beating himself up for it. 

To be so close is to be Tantalus, reaching for what he can never taste, with a thirst he can never slake, but it isn’t only that, it isn’t only suffering. It’s relief also. To be so close is to bask in his own personal sunbeam, to be so close is to feel the missing pieces of himself trickle back into place. To be so close is to find the meaning of life, in a hundred little ways. There’s a wanting part of him that will never be fulfilled, but there’s a part of him that doesn’t need anything more than this to be whole. 

Also, his hand is inches from Eddie’s thigh, and when he shifts, the fabric drapes differently over his leg, and he thinks that if he did, if he were to reach out and touch, it would be allowed. Not to grope, not to slide higher, not to _ take_. Not to eat the fruit overhead or drink the water below. But to touch, light and companionable. To rest in the sunbeam. He would, he knows, be able to run his hand through the gold of his hair, just not gentle the way he wants to. He would, he knows, be able to wrap his arms around him, just not sweetly, the way he wants to. 

He needs air, he needs to move. There’s a restlessness in him that he’d hoped was all burned out, but just like the rest of him, he seems to have an infinite capacity to burn. Everything has him on edge, everything hurts, and he might lean a little heavy on the bottle, but he knows when it’s time to call it quits-- he’s had enough of that for one night. Another drink isn’t going to solve his problems, it’s just going to make new ones-- like being hungover, like missing his flight away from this deathtrap, like saying something stupid…

Eddie rises when he does, citing a need to get something from his room, and so Richie volunteers to walk with him. He had needed to get out of the room, but he doesn’t think he needs to get away from Eddie, not really. 

“What’s this?” Eddie reaches up, as they near his door, his fingertips grazing Richie’s ear. “When did you get this pierced?”

“A while back, I guess.” He grins. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s you.” And his thumb circles the little stud. “Is that what all the cool guys are doing out in California?”

“Only the very cool guys.” Richie laughs, catching Eddie’s wrist, not yet pulling him away. His other hand comes up to mirror him instead, to brush against his earlobe. “What about you? You ever thought about doing it?”

“No, never.” He laughs, ducking away. 

“What, the special lady in your life wouldn’t like it?” He teases, his hand dropping down to Eddie’s waist, pulling him into a clumsy dance. “You don’t think she’d fall head over heels for that?”

“Richie!” Eddie practically squeals, but he doesn’t pull away from Richie’s hold, he just does his best to follow along until Richie releases him so that he can open his door. “No, she would not. You really haven’t grown up, have you?”

“Where it counts.” He shrugs. 

“I meant-- I meant it was a good thing.” Eddie says, and his cheeks go pink. “You’re just how I remember. Well-- only with an earring and a mustache. And now I’m the one who wears glasses. You look good, Richie. And I’m glad you haven’t changed too much. Where it counts.”

“You, too, pal.” He ruffles Eddie’s hair, following him into the room, standing by while Eddie digs through his luggage-- he has a very nice view of Eddie digging through his luggage. “Just as cute as I remember.”

“Richie, you’re teasing me.” He accuses, but that’s a far cry from ‘beep beep, Richie’. Almost sounds like ‘please keep teasing me’, if he could think he wasn’t just hearing what he wants to hear.

“Sure. Wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t.”

“No.” He closes his suitcase, and smiles up at Richie, and Richie wishes he could forget, forget that Eddie has a serious girlfriend waiting on him, forget that there’s a damn good reason not to give into the warm and gently tipsy urge to pull him close once more, touch his face again, drown in the warmth of him, kiss his lips. “I guess it wouldn’t.”

Just then, there’s a crashing noise from down the hall, and Eddie grabs for his arm-- the arm he throws out to keep himself between Eddie and the door, just in case that something comes their way.

“That sounds like it could be coming from my room.” He says, starting towards the door.

“Richie, you can’t--”

“You’re damn right I can’t, I’m locking your door!” He says, but when there’s a shout from the hall, he abandons his cowardice. That, he thinks, is the problem with liquid courage-- he doesn’t want to be courageous. Or maybe the real problem is that he can’t listen to a friend in trouble and do nothing. “Shit, that sounds like Ben. Eddie… stay here, lock the door behind me.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Probably.” He squares his shoulders. “Just promise me you’ll stay safe.”

“No-- I mean, splitting up is how It gets us, a locked door isn’t going to matter. I’ll be safer with you. And-- and you’ll be safer with me.”

Oh, he could kiss him, he really could.

Only, he really can’t.

The scene in the hallway, when he opens the door, isn’t It at all, though he wouldn’t put it past that greasepainted son of a bitch to have a hand in it. The scene he opens the door onto is Henry fucking Bowers, white-haired and crazy, throwing himself against a door, and Mike, Bill, and Bev running up the stairs, alerted by the crashing noise, Ben’s shout. Ben, at least, is safe behind Door Number Three. Door Number Two, Richie’s door, is hanging open, and he’s not particularly keen to see the state of it. 

“Oh, that is _ it_, I gotta get out of this town.” He moans, but Bowers has a weapon, and he turns towards the open door, since Ben is safely barricaded, and Richie’s not about to let Eddie get hurt, and he’s not about to leave Mike, Bill, and Bev to fight alone.

With the sound of all of them teaming up against Bowers, Ben comes bursting out to join in, and Richie can’t quite track everything that’s happening-- someone punches him hard in the gut, and he assumes that someone was Bowers, but six adults, screaming and swinging and mostly sane enough to control themselves in a fight, Bowers is no match. 

Mike’s managed to get the worst of it, but all six of them crowd back into Eddie’s room, and Eddie’s got a traveling pharmacy that puts any other first aid kit to shame. Ben goes with Richie to check the damage to his room while Eddie plays doctor-- not good. Not terrible, but not good. He brings his suitcase back with him, leaving the room. Bowers may be taken care of, but there’s no way he’s sleeping there.

Eddie is just getting Mike bandaged, when he gets back-- he looks up from his task, their eyes meeting, and he flashes Richie a quick smile before his attention returns to the bandages.

“We should get you to a hospital.” He says, once he finishes his patch-up job.

“I’m not sure there’s anything they could do for me that you haven’t already done.” Mike chuckles, patting Eddie’s arm. 

“You’re not running out now.” Bill frowns, taking in the suitcase in Richie’s hand. “Where are you going?”

“Buddy, if you want to trade rooms with me, be my guest, but mine’s been broken into. I’m not staying there.”

“You can stay with me, Richie.” Eddie pipes up, giving everyone a quick once-over and a little arnica for any forming bruises he spots, before he packs up his pharmacy.

Oh, he should say no to that… but, well…

“Thanks. Should have guessed I could count on my spaghetti man.”

“You can stay _ if _ you don’t call me that again.”

“I’ll try to control myself.” Richie grins. “Which side of the bed do you take?”

“Um… left, I guess. Unless you want the left.”

“Right’s fine by me.”

They take turns in the bathroom, when the others all return to their own rooms. Richie settles in and tells himself there’s enough room to share. When they were kids, they’d cram into a single twin bed and think nothing of it… well, at some point he’d started thinking something of it, lying there with Eddie cradled in his arms. Eddie, who hated the dark back then, but he would sleep without a nightlight if they were together. Richie doesn’t imagine he was special-- he thinks Eddie would have been fine with the dark no matter which Loser was around, but it still felt special, when he was the one in bed with him. When he felt his own fears recede a little because they were together, and it always felt safer to be together.

Well… it still feels safer to be together. It’s just harder.

He slips his hand into Eddie’s, in the space between them, and squeezes once. Eddie holds on, and doesn’t let his hand slip away again.

“Richie…” He whispers, and he doesn’t finish the thought. The question.

“Yes.” He whispers back. He doesn’t need Eddie to finish. He thinks he knows. 

_ Will you stay_?

And damn him, he will.


	2. When It Comes Down to Fooling You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Richie instantly regrets pulling a 'no homo' when he feels all of the homo for Eddie (who does NOT die).

Every single thing feels like it’s gone to shit, and Richie wishes he could just say he should have left Derry when he had the chance, but he doesn’t. And it isn’t only Eddie, though he would not have stayed for just anyone, would not have stayed if Eddie hadn’t reached for him with an unspoken question. He loves them all still, he does. But this…

Maybe he’d have stayed in the end, but he doesn’t think he’s that good. He doesn’t think he’s that brave. What he thinks of himself is that mostly, he’s just a sucker for Eddie Kaspbrak, and he’s spent half his life being dumb and reckless for him. Making himself a bigger target to take the heat off of Eddie, mostly, being louder and more obnoxious and easier for their childhood bullies to hate. But if he could face that psychopath Bowers for his friends, he can face the clown. He’s a grown man, and he-- well, he’s afraid, he’s very afraid, but so are his friends, and they’re going anyway, and if they can do it, he can do it.

Besides… _ It _ has Bill’s wife, like it’s not enough It took Georgie from him back when they were kids, and Bill… Bill’s the oldest friend he’s got, now, he guesses. With Stan gone, he’s known Bill the longest, by just a little bit. It was Bill who introduced him to Eddie, and if he hadn’t done that… It was Bill who made them all a real group. Maybe Richie doesn’t owe him anything now, but maybe he does, and maybe it’s not about what you owe. Maybe it’s just that he remembers how deeply he’d loved and admired Bill when they were boys, and he’d have done anything and gone anywhere for him once.

Maybe he’s not brave, maybe he’s just stupid, but does it matter? He’d forgotten how good it felt to be with these people, but the feelings were there even before he knew where they belonged, and now…

Now they’re entering It’s lair together again, men-and-woman on a mission.

It’s Eddie who stops them, before they head in. Not out of fear of pressing onward, which Richie thinks would be a perfectly sensible reason to stop, but to confess something. Which he guesses is fair, because they’re probably all going to die and they might as well get what they need to off their chests now.

Well, everyone else might as well. Richie thinks he’d better take his to the grave. Wouldn’t exactly be welcome, now, would it?

Or maybe it would, because Eddie’s confession tumbles out and it is what it is and he ought to say anything other than the terrified lie that he feels bubbling out of him. 

He regrets the words the second they’re out of his mouth-- so what else is new?-- but Eddie’s eyes are so wide, something in his face so soft, that Richie shoulders past the others to get to him without a second thought, pulling him into his arms. There’s a little half-voiced noise of protest before Eddie falls into him, tucking himself in against Richie’s chest and clinging to him in return with a hitch of his breath. 

“Richie, please…” He whispers, and there’s something broken in it, and he shouldn’t have defaulted to making fun, not about this, not now, he knows he shouldn’t have, and why has Eddie always been the one person to never tell him to back off, never tell him he’s crossed a line… oh, sure, there’s always been that playful squabbling, the insistence that he’d hated this or that, but he remembers now, he remembers a hundred times or more when Eddie might have beeped him and didn’t, compared to the handful of times he did, and now he could absolutely call him out for an asshole but he isn’t. But he’s asking, for something. 

“Hey, hey…” He whispers, and one hand slips up to cup around the back of his head, fingers sliding through his hair. “Hey, it’s okay… c’mon, nobody thinks-- nobody thinks any less of you for that, come on.”

“Guys--” Bev starts, and falls silent. 

“We have to move.” Bill says, when she doesn’t finish the thought. 

“Yeah, yeah. Right behind you. Eddie…” Richie guides him up out of hiding, leans in to whisper in his ear. “Look, the virgin thing…”

“Richie, _ please_.” He repeats. 

“No, I mean, I get it, I get it, I-- Maybe it wouldn’t have been worth it, with-- with the wrong person. I just-- what I said earlier, I’m an ass, but-- Eddie, what I said earlier…”

“_Guys_.”

“Right behind you!”

“_Rich_.” Bill motions for him to hurry it up. “Come on--”

“Beep fucking beep, I get it. Just-- give me a minute.” He waves him off, wanting a little space, a little privacy. He knows they don’t have all the time in the world, and he doesn’t want Bill losing someone else to that thing, but he needs time for _ this_. He needs to make the moment right-- he needs to make a confession of his own before it’s too late. “Eddie-- everyone I’ve ever been with has been the wrong person, and I-- I wish…”

The rest of the words won’t come, and all he can do is will him to understand. Will him to fit all the same returned memories together like puzzle pieces, to look at the history of bad jokes and pinched cheeks and ruffled hair, nicknames and cries of ‘cute’ and all the things he never shared with the others the way he shared with Eddie, and every time he took the proverbial bullet for him with Bowers’ gang or with any other danger he could throw himself in front of. He was never brave, exactly. Just stupid-- at least, where one boy was concerned. Just in love. 

“You wish you--?”

“Richie--” Bill presses, antsy. Not that he can blame him.

“Look, when this is all over, I’ll--” He fumbles the end of his sentence, lost in the way Eddie looks up at him, the hand still gripping his jacket tight. His hand shifts to cup Eddie’s cheek, and he can’t… he can’t say it. He leans in, instead, and Eddie throws an arm around him and doesn’t let up his hold on Richie’s jacket. When Richie kisses him, Eddie kisses back. Trembles in his arms and makes the sweetest little sound, and they don’t have all day for this, but he wishes they did… 

“You’ll…?” Eddie quirks an eyebrow at him, in much better spirits now. The nerves that had taken him only a moment ago seem to have vanished. 

“Come on, spaghetti man. We’ve got a job to do. And… yeah, then, we’ll…”

Eddie might be braver now, but it hits Richie hard, what he’s just done, and in front of everyone. There’s no way he can pass that off as a joke, and even if he could, he wouldn’t, not when Eddie had kissed back… if he’d shoved him off and said he hated being played around with, maybe, but not when they both… 

He hates how much has been stolen from him. All the years he didn’t know what to do with himself, all the things he couldn’t remember, all the… all the damage. All the memories he should have held onto of his first love, confusing and frightening as it was. He remembers it now, he remembers lying on his stomach playing parcheesi, distracted by the way a beam of sunlight fell over Eddie, how it lit his dark eyes. He remembers trying to convince himself he just wasn’t interested in kissing _ yet _ and that was why no girl’s lips ever captured his attention the way a certain cute pout did, and he remembers giving into that pout and the accompanying big, brown eyes, whenever Eddie wanted something it was within his power to give, even if he had to make sure to tease him extra to make up for his hopeless, helpless softness. He remembers sitting under a bedroom window in the dead of night, having snuck out of his own, and the squirm in the pit of his stomach when he thought about waking him and decided he wanted him to sleep, what with his arm. He remembers feigned reluctance to share a lick of an ice cream, and the giddy sort of pride that came with knowing how Eddie was about germs and thinking maybe it meant something special if his germs were considered an acceptable risk. He remembers Eddie, at long last, all his sweetness and sass, all his worries and his sterling bravery in the face of them. 

“You know I hate it when you call me that.” Eddie says, and he doesn’t sound like he hates it at all, as his hand slips into Richie’s and they move with the others, heading deeper. 

The others don’t say anything about it. They’ve all got bigger fish to fry. Maybe this silence can’t last forever, but for now, he’ll take it. If they survive this, he’ll deal with what their friends think, but… but he and Eddie will be fine, between themselves. He believes that-- believes it because of the way Eddie has leaned into him since they reconnected, because of the memories he’s begun to get back of years of teasing and flirting that could never reach its conclusion… because Eddie _ had _kissed him back.

They hold onto each other as they move deeper, only letting go when it’s unavoidable, quickly finding their way back to each other, until Bill’s caught in the deadlights, and Richie motions for Eddie to stay back, when he and Ben both move to try and break him out of it.

It doesn’t go well, not that Richie could come up with that thought when he’s caught in them himself. He’s just as gone, until suddenly he isn’t, and that thing has Eddie. 

Ben and Bill are on the ground with him, Bev is taking aim with Mike covering her, and Richie is lost, because that thing has Eddie, his Eddie, his only.

When Eddie hits the ground, Richie runs to his side, doesn’t think a moment about It or anything else. He can’t think about anything else, and if It were to grab him in that moment, he thinks he’d make it to Eddie’s side just the same, would free himself on the power of belief, because the only thing he believes in now is how badly he needs Eddie, how little his life has meant without him and how much it’s meant to be back with him.

“Eddie!” He shoulders past Bev, hits his knees, crawls over him. “Eddie-- Eds, hey, come on-- come on, spaghetti man, stay with me!”

There’s no blood, but shit, that doesn’t mean anything. He could have a traumatic brain injury or a severed spinal cord or internal bleeding, Richie doesn’t want to account for the possibility but he can’t stop himself thinking it. 

“Richie…” Eddie meets his eyes, a little hazy, his breathing a little labored. 

“You’re going to be okay.” He presses, cupping Eddie’s cheek, careful not to jar his neck. How do you check for all that shit? Eddie would know, but he doesn’t think he can explain it to him now.

“Did you… mean it?”

He can’t do this, he can’t do this, he can’t do this. Raw panic chokes him, his stomach feels sour. Eddie means the kiss, he imagines, or the half-spoken promise of more than just that kiss, but there’s more he might mean. Years of little touches written off as jokes, of calling him cute at every opportunity, of ‘Eddie my love’ and shows of devotion so over the top they could only be taken for teasing. He meant them all.

“Yes.” Richie whispers, stroking Eddie’s cheek. “Always. Eds…”

“Richie… Richie, you know I--”

He hadn’t thought it was possible for Eddie to go even limper, but he does, lolling into the hand on his cheek, and the panic flares up a little harder, before Richie feels the barest exhale against his wrist. Alive. He’s still alive.

“You hold that thought, honey.” He places his free hand over Eddie’s stomach, focuses on feeling the rise and fall. He leans in to kiss the cheek his hand isn’t already covering. “Now I’m going to go make _ sure _ that-- that thing-- Eddie, I promise-- I promise.”

“You okay?” Bev asks, voice soft, hand light but present on his shoulder.

“Don’t know.” He admits. There’s a soft voice in the back of his head that suggests he should be funny about it, a little glib, that there are things he could say that would sound more ‘Richie’, but he doesn’t feel like that Richie. There’s a cold fury in him that he doesn’t think existed the first time around. 

He doesn’t know if he’s okay, and he won’t know that, not until Eddie is okay… but he does know that he can beat It. He _ knows_. There’s no fear, and there’s no doubt, there’s only certainty-- that they _ can _ kill It, that he _ will _ kill It, that now the hideous, terrible thing that’s hurt Eddie is going to hurt. 

His belief doesn’t waver.

With Pennywise dead, he’s left without a choice-- spinal injury or no, he needs to get Eddie out of there, has to move him regardless of the consequences, because the consequence to not moving him is certain death. There’s no coming back with a stretcher and a rescue team, there’s only getting out while the getting is good, but he believes in that, too. He believes a little more desperately and a little less certainly than he had before, but he believes nonetheless. Gets Eddie into a fireman’s carry and visualizes the safety and freedom of being back out on the street with the house behind them and a trip to the hospital ahead of them. 

He hands Ben his keys, for the drive to the hospital, and does his best to hold Eddie as still as he can. The ride seems to last forever when he’s worrying about whether Eddie is breathing, how his heartbeat is doing, what might be broken or ruptured, and yet all too soon Eddie is being taken from his arms, swept off on a gurney.

Bill goes with Audra to make sure she’s going to be all right, and Mike’s taken somewhere, too, so an actual professional can have a look at him, leaving Richie with Ben and Bev, the three of them unhurt enough to be left to their own devices, to drift to a waiting area. 

They sit to either side of him when he collapses into a chair, Ben’s hand on his shoulder, Bev’s on his knee.

“Richie, sweetie… how about now?” She asks.

“You’ll find out when I do.” He says, and he tries to smile for her, and only manages a bare twitch of one. 

“Do you… do you want to talk about what happened?” Ben squeezes gently, massages at his shoulder a little until some of his stiffness drops away. It’s exhaustion as much as relaxation, but at the same time, they’re both sticking by him-- they saw that kiss back there and they’re not pulling away from him. 

“Which part, Benny-boy? The killer clown, the giant spider from space that used to be a clown, the lunatic that broke into my hotel room, attacked you, and nearly took Mike out of the action before the six of us killed him? The world’s worst dessert? The friar’s club roast featuring the severed head of my childhood best friend? Or-- or Eddie?”

“Whichever part you want.” Ben says, because of course he does. Because Ben is sweet and gentle and _ steady_.

“It’s all pretty terrible.”

“I know.”

“Eddie will pull through.” Bev adds. “He will. _ Believe _ that.”

“Believe… It won’t work. Just believing something-- Maybe it works on demon clowns, but this is real life, and-- and Stan’s not here.” His breath catches. “Stan’s not here, so we’re not-- So it’s not--”

“Bill’s wife. Audra.” She manages to snatch the meaning out of his building panic. “She was there in It’s lair and she’s here in the hospital, and that makes seven of us. So there.”

She squeezes his hand, and this time he does manage to smile for her. It’s watery and weak and a little desperate, but it could still be called a smile.

“Do you know, Beverly, that I once convinced myself I was just a little bit in love with you?” He turns his hand over in hers so that he can squeeze back. 

“But you weren’t?” She smiles back, warm.

“There wouldn’t have been room for little old me on your dance card if I had been.” And his smile gets a little warmer in return, a little stronger. “No, but… you would have been an easy girl to love, Miss Marsh.”

“Well I’d have danced with you, Mister Tozier. One good waltz around the room. You would have been an incredibly difficult boy to love, but I’m sure if the stars had aligned, I would have been up for the challenge.” She laughs. “Our hearts were taken.”

“They were.” He nods.

“And now?” She gives his hand another squeeze.

“Oh, you tell me.”

Her gaze flickers past him a moment, to Ben. Something comes over her smile. 

“Time will tell. Maybe.” She nudges him. 

“I never really stopped. Loving…” He doesn’t say it, can’t say it. She doesn’t press him to. Her head rests against his shoulder, and Ben’s arm slides around his waist. “My ex wives all called me ‘distant’... I never meant to be. ‘Unreachable’. ‘Richie, it’s like there’s a part of you you never share with me’, that kind of thing, and I… I didn’t ever take it seriously. Which, by wife number three at _ least _ I should have, and by wife number four maybe it’s a little embarrassing, but… I could never understand it. I wasn’t holding something back on purpose, I never thought of myself as one of those men who couldn’t be present, I… I made time, and sure, maybe I cracked a lot of jokes, maybe I had trouble being open with my feelings, but I was never cold. I never saw myself pulling back the way you see some guys do, when they check out of their marriages, when they have affairs or just stop caring, or even just when they realize no one ever taught them how to be a married man and they can’t handle sharing their lives with another person, I was never like that. I didn’t think. But sometimes… sometimes I’d wake up in the middle of the night, not remembering my dreams, not knowing how to describe the feelings they left me with, and I’d turn over in the dark and reach for the body next to mine, and… and do you know the craziest thing?”

“What?” Ben’s voice is soft, he holds Richie a little tighter. 

“I’d put my arm around my wife-- any wife, every wife, it happened enough-- and I would feel this… this creeping wrongness that made the hair on my arms and the back of my neck stand on end, it would go straight to my gut, and… do you know what it felt like? It felt like I was having an affair. Now I’ve never… I’ve never, not even when times were bad, no matter what the offer, but that was the feeling. I’d look at this familiar face, the woman I was meant to love above all others, and I’d _ loathe _ myself for cheating with her. And I-- Hell, I went to a shrink, a couple times, asked did anyone else ever think he was having an affair with his own wife? But I was on my second marriage before I gave in and got my head shrunk, and he just said it was guilt over moving on after my divorce and that I needed to give myself permission to find my second chance at happiness. Not like he could have known. I wonder if I’ll start remembering my dreams now.”

“I hope you start remembering the good ones.”

“Before Bowers-- hell, _ Bowers_\--”

“It was an accident, and it was in self-defense. And I think it was merciful, considering it was Bowers. I can’t imagine he’d have actually made it out of all this… It would have killed him, too.”

“None of us… none of us can really know who…” Ben hesitates. 

“Who really…?” Richie draws a finger across his throat, with the imitation of a death rattle that’s just a little too good for his own comfort, let alone Ben’s. “Sure. Isn’t that what they do with firing squads? No one knows who has the real bullet?”

“I guess. Something like that. Maybe. Can we not talk about the guy we killed?”

“Sure. Yeah. No, I was just saying, before… all of that. Upstairs, Eddie… Just for a moment, I-- it was a gag, I guess, and he was in my arms, we were laughing, and then we weren’t. I thought he was with someone, I thought… And it was so wrong of me to _ want _ like I-- But it felt right, being close to him. When he smiled at me, I felt… _ complete_. I haven’t felt complete since we were all kids. It’s not-- it’s not all about sex. What I feel for him--”

“We know.” Ben nods, squeezes him again. 

“I’m not some… sex-maniac just because we’re both-- I mean, I don’t, I’m not only interested in--”

“Richie, we _ know_.” Bev does the same. She wraps an arm around his front, and Ben’s arm is around his back, and between the both of them they just hold him. 

“I mean, I love him!”

“We know.” She shushes him gently. “We do.”

“You know, people think it’s all--” He sniffs, presses a hand over his mouth. “People think it’s all parties and meaningless sex, like it’s so _ different _ with a man, but he-- he’s not like that to me. He’s real.”

“You’re in love with him. You’ve been in love with him for a very long time.” Ben nods. 

“Even in LA, people don’t… And they’ll say these things right in front of a guy, if they think he’s not _ one of those_. They’ll say it right in front of me, and they don’t even think they-- I mean, and these are the people who think they’re open-minded, Ben! ‘Cause they work in show business and they know a few gay guys who work as PAs and makeup artists, or actors-- and when it’s a name, they’ll gossip like it can’t sink a career for a guy, they don’t know how careless they are, and they think they’re the good ones just ‘cause they’re not going out and bashing guys coming out of bars, but the way they talk, you’d think some of these people believe Cruising was a documentary! The years I’ve spent laughing and shrugging and saying ‘I don’t know about that’ when I could have been saying ‘you know, I’m _ one of those_’... but they talk about it like we don’t have all the same feelings. And if a guy likes both, if a guy has the balls to like both, he’s got to pick a side and if he picks one side, people aren’t sure if he really feels anything emotional, and if he picks the other side, people are sure he doesn’t, and if he won’t, then he’s worse, and I’m so sick of _ people_. I’ve spent my whole life trying to make people happy, but I don’t know what feelings are. Spent my whole life loving one man so much that even having my memories erased by a monster clown couldn’t get him out of my heart, but I don’t know what feelings are. I’m so _ sick _ of people.”

Ben is rubbing circles on his back. He’s on Ben’s shoulder and Bev is on his, and when he’s gotten all the words out he just slumps there and waits. He feels emptied out, hollow. He’s not sure if it’s a bad feeling or a good one-- like maybe he was just scraped out so something new and better could fill him up, and he’s only waiting on it to come and do just that.

Bill and Audra rejoin them, and then Mike. Rather than sit along the wall, they pull some chairs over into a rough semi-circle opposite. 

“Too early for news?” Mike asks.

“Yeah. We’re waiting.” Bev nods. “How are you guys?”

“I’ll be just fine. Doctor said whoever provided on-the-scene first aid did a good job.” He snorts, his smile tired and gentle and sunset-warm. There’s a comforting sweetness in it, in the indirect praise, in knowing Mike’s mind is on Eddie, too, even with his own injuries to think about.

“I’ll be all right, I guess.” Audra adds. “I’m gonna have nightmares. But I’ll be all right.”

“Richie?” Bill prompts.

“I’ll be all right when he’s all right.”

He leans forward to pat Richie’s knee. “Okay. We’ll wait together.”


End file.
